Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jun 3)

[Kragen Sitaker]

QOTW:  "Imagine two painters.  One spends half his time at arts supplies
stores, checking out the tiniest differences between different models of
brushes, different brands of paint, canvases prepared with minutely
distinct processes yielding minute roughness and absorption differences,
and so on.  The other painter has settled on good, reliable lines of
brushes, paint and canvases, had put these minutiae basically out of her
mind, and spends her time and energy actually painting, working out
different lighting and composition techniques, and so on."  Alex
Martelli, on the perfectibility of computer languages


* Code:
    Pycaml, which interfaces Python to OCaml, a higher-level
    alternative to C for speed-critical code, released version 0.8 on
    2002-05-28.
        http://pycaml.sf.net/

    Twisted, a framework for networked applications that includes
    implementations of a large number of common protocols as well as a
    remote object protocol with bindings in Python, Java, and elisp,
    released version 0.18.0 on 2002-06-01.
        http://twistedmatrix.com/

    Pygame, a Python binding to the popular SDL games-programming
    library, released version 1.5 on 2002-05-30.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3CF79DA4.7090503%40attbi.com

    Sheila King posted some "liberal" email parsing code that handles
    malformed mail headers better than the current standard email
    module, which doesn't parse Klez emails (among others) very well.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=acvmf3.t8.1%40kserver.org

    Russell Owen posted a GenericCallback class that curries callback
    functions to ease GUI programming.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=adc8kj$1ovk$1%40nntp6.u.washington.edu

    PySQLite, a Python wrapper for the SQLite embedded RDBMS, released
    version 0.2.0 on 2002-06-02.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023065045.19962.python-list%40python.org

    libxml, the GNOME XML library, released version 2.4.22 on
    2002-05-27.
        http://xmlsoft.org/news.html

    PdfSearch, a search engine for archives of PDF files with
    command-line and GUI interfaces, released version 0.1 on
    2002-06-02.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022767921.8082.clpa-moderators%40python.org

* Discussion on Features of Python:
    Jython doesn't run finalizers promptly (or, sometimes, at all),
    with the result that open('foo.txt', 'w').write(something) may
    never write anything to foo.txt.  Some think relying on CPython's
    prompt finalization is a bug, but Francois Pinard explained why he
    thinks it's Jython's behavior that's the bug.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022711561.21409.python-list%40python.org

    There was some discussion of 'for any' and 'for every' boolean
    expressions similar to list comprehensions; Tim Peters pointed out
    that ABC had them and they were nice.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022602963.3818.python-list%40python.org

    Grant Griffin explained why the implicit string concatenation done
    by the Python parser is un-Pythonic.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ad8dp701452%40drn.newsguy.com

    Aahz advocated using the Queue module for any and all inter-thread
    communication; Mark Hammond thought that position too extreme.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3CF43BA6.5020106%40skippinet.com.au

    Berthold Höllmann complained that distutils breaks
    platform-independence of scripts when Python executables are
    installed in platform-specific directories.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=m2k7pmlj3l.fsf%40pchoel.privat.uni-hamburg.de

* Problems and Solutions:
    Tim Churches recommended RPy for easy visualization of large
    arrays of numbers, such as Numeric arrays.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022712528.1085.python-list%40python.org

    Andrei Kulakov praised the startup speed of pygtk applications in
    a thread about wxPython startup speed; several other posters on
    the thread had switched from wxPython to pygtk or even Tkinter to
    get better performance.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=slrnafj3eo.86f.ak%40ak.silmarill.org

    Carsten Gaebler noticed that popen would cause your Python program
    to hang forever on exit if you forgot to specify 'w'.  Donn Cave
    explained why.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ad0bkd$2608$1%40nntp6.u.washington.edu
    There's also a problem with Python's SIGPIPE handling and
    popen()ed programs that don't exit on their own --- they don't
    die.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ad2vun$1eua$1%40nntp6.u.washington.edu

    Someone had trouble getting McMillan Installer to work on a
    program that used Gadfly; Gordon McMillan thought it was because
    of a particular unusual technique Gadfly used to load its grammar,
    but Richard Jones said it no longer used that technique.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022623853.18650.python-list%40python.org

    Steindl Fritz wanted a variadic Cartesian product function; his
    problem got many solutions, the tersest of which was Steven
    Majewski's.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022695262.8171.python-list%40python.org

* Miscellaneous:
    "gb", from UNC-CH, posted their Python-code-folding setup for
    Emacs.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=uelftqprw.fsf%40cs.unc.edu

    Syver Enstad has a hack to allow HTML links in pydoc output to
    open your preferred editor with the right source file, but only on
    Microsoft Windows.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=un0ugnxa3.fsf%40online.no

    Emile van Sebille and Tim Delaney posted references to good online
    search pages for the Python documentation.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022801931.24850.python-list%40python.org

    EuroPython early-bird registration has been extended until
    2002-06-09 because of a rush of last-minute early-bird
    registrations and Internet problems.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022925562.29795.python-list%40python.org

    The EuroPython web site published an interview with Paul
    F. Dubois, the primary maintainer of NumPy.
        http://europython.zope.nl/interviews/entries/paul_dubois

    David Mertz has reviewed more Python books.
        http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-pbook3.html

    Michal Wallace posted a reference to some code-duplication-finding
    software he'd written; Tim Peters posted a link to some research
    on the subject and mentioned he wished there was a fast
    suffix-tree extension module for Python.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022725195.17768.python-list%40python.org
    It turns out that Danny Yoo has written a suffix-tree extension
    module for Python.
        http://www-hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/~dyoo/python/suffix_trees/

    Quinn Dunkan extolled the merits of customized development
    environments when Oren Tirosh claimed not to have a personal
    utility library.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=slrnafafkp.eom.quinn%40regurgitate.ugcs.caltech.edu

    PEP 272, the API for block encryption algorithms, has been
    finalized.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1022760847.17663.clpa-moderators%40python.org

    There is now a page on python.org about Python-friendly hosting
    providers.
        http://www.python.org/hosting/


========================================================================

Everything you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages:

    Python.org's Python Language Website is the traditional
    center of Pythonia
        http://www.python.org
    Notice especially the master FAQ
        http://www.python.org/doc/FAQ.html

    PythonWare complements the digest you're reading with the
    daily python url
         http://www.pythonware.com/daily  
    Mygale is a news-gathering webcrawler that specializes in (new)
    World-Wide Web articles related to Python.
	 http://www.awaretek.com/nowak/mygale.html 
    While cosmetically similar, Mygale and the Daily Python-URL
    are utterly different in their technologies and generally in
    their results.

    comp.lang.python.announce announces new Python software.  Be
    sure to scan this newly-revitalized newsgroup at least weekly.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python.announce

    Michael Hudson continued Andrew Kuchling's marvelous tradition
    of summarizing action on the python-dev mailing list once every
    other week, into July 2001.  Any volunteers to re-start this
    valuable series?
        http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/summaries/
        http://www.amk.ca/python/dev

    The Vaults of Parnassus ambitiously collect Python resources
        http://www.vex.net/~x/parnassus/   

    Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group
    mailing lists
        http://www.python.org/sigs/

    The Python Software Foundation has replaced the Python Consortium
    as an independent nexus of activity
        http://www.python.org/psf/

    Cetus does much of the same
	http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html

    Python FAQTS
        http://python.faqts.com/

    The old Python "To-Do List" now lives principally in a
    SourceForge reincarnation.
	http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse
	http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0042.html
     
    The online Python Journal is posted at pythonjournal.cognizor.com.
    editor at pythonjournal.com and editor at pythonjournal.cognizor.com
    welcome submission of material that helps people's understanding
    of Python use, and offer Web presentation of your work.

    *Py: the Journal of the Python Language*
        http://www.pyzine.com

    Links2Go is a new semi-automated link collection; it's impressive
    what AI can generate
        http://www.links2go.com/search?search=python

    Tenth International Python Conference 
        http://www.python10.org            

    Archive probing tricks of the trade:
        http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=comp.lang.python&num=100
        http://groups.google.com/groups?meta=site%3Dgroups%26group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*

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